chinese new year

i'm not really sure what happened, but this chinese new year has been anticlimatic. it's my favorite holiday, but it felt really deflated this year. maybe i'm not feeling lonely and miserable because i have family with me this year so i didn't make much effort to celebrate. i cleaned the house a little more thoroughly than usual and kept vegetarian on the first day (it's bad luck to start off the new year by shedding blood). we called mom. fireworks were set off in manhattan chinatown, but i didn't go. well, the slushy streets were not an enticing factor, especially in chinatown. i'm not sure if i would've gone though had the weather been nice and the streets were actually clean. it is the year of the pig - i take it that it's okay to just eat, get fat, and (try to) be happy.

happy chinese new year!

valentine's day

i'm surprised that i didn't despise this holiday as i normally do. i didn't dread it. maybe it helps to not be exposed to all the commercialization of this day by staying couped in my apartment. sure, there were tv ads specifically tailored for this holidays (every time i see a jewelry ad, i only see blood) but cutting out the oversaturation of pink in all the store windows helped. maybe the city is so grey as well, and the weather has been gloomy. the snow and sleet kind of overshadowed the festive atmosphere, as if mother nature was forcing us to be alone today, a confirmation that being a singleton is perfectly fine, in contrast to the marketers' message.

anyway, i sincerely wish everyone a happy v day amidst all the gloom.

madness

an astronaut driving cross-country wearing diapers to confront her nemesis in a love triangle. anna nicole smith's death getting as much coverage as ford's, a former u.s. president. the u.s. government losing 8 billion dollars in cash. what is the world coming to? of course, there's also the confirmation of global warming that is long overdue. i thought this was a phenomenon every one in the u.s. learned in elementary school. (that's when i learned it.) waterworld has been on bravotv lately. i can't bring myself to see it because i feel the probability of the world actually ending up like the movie is increasing. it frightens me. i'm not a good swimmer. my kids (when i have them) will definitely learn to swim like olympic champions, and i can only hope that it'll take longer than my lifetime for the world to reach that stage.

but back to the psycho astronaut. i guess this incidence proves that we're only humans after all. she's obviously someone who's well-educated (probably even better educated than most of the well-educated), and yet, her life has turned into another episode on jerry springer (is that show still on?).

a friend pointed out to me that anna nicole smith's death is getting as much coverage as gerald ford's. not that there should be a contest of whose death gets more coverage. but is it because ford was never "elected" to be president that he was brought down to her level or is it because she married some geezer-tycoon that moved her up the american social/cultural ladder to ford's level?

the 8 billion dollars in cash. i can't even fathom that number, 8 billion, of ANYTHING, let alone in the form of cold hard cash. i get pissed if i lost 8 dollars and would totally freak if i lost 80 dollars. but 8 billion? 9 zeros follow the 8. i've never even counted that high before. the video clips of the bricks of ben franklins shrink-wrapped onto giant crates (yes, not in metal cases with locks but just clear plastic) that was showed on the nightly news astounded me. having figured out my parents' taxes this afternoon, i can't believe my parents who hold laborious jobs, especially for their age, owe money to a government that would lose 8 billion dollars. if we just don't pay taxes, then this idiot government won't have the money to lose...hm...i'll have to think about that.

tv junkie

first, it was project runway. then, top chef, australian open, acc (so good to be back on the east coast!), and maybe top design, which started this wednesday. all this on top of the office, nova science now, and frontline. oh, and of course, pretty much anything on food network. now that we have cable, i'm watching too much tv. the tv i had in california received barely 3 channels so i relied on the radio. i could listen to kpcc all day and have done so on occasion. i know i really don't watch that much tv. 3-5 hours a day isn't that unusual, right? it just seems so excessive compared to what i had been used to. i feel like my life revolves around the weekly tv schedule. with the radio, it just stays on while i can do other things. it's much harder to work on things with the tv because it involves visual and audio concentration whereas radio just requires audio concentration. i've been unplugging the tv at the end of the day so i won't be tempted to turn it on, just to see what's on and veg. i should listen to wnyc more often, but they don't have all the programs that i used to listen to. thank goodness for podcasts, saving me from drowning in the abundance of crap tv and giving me no excuses to not be productive.